Ghana’s Minister of Works and Housing, Yaw Barimah has been in London to attend a workshop at the Department for International Development. In an exclusive interview with Bernard Otabil for West Africa he explains the problems of private sector involvement in water supply and his new role as Minister of Works and Housing.

According to the Minister for Works and Housing most of the pipelines laid for the distribution of water in Ghana are very old, some as far back as 1957 and without proper maintenance.

Reacting to complaints from some urban consumers, he said the poor quality of water through their taps is not from the treatment plants “but as a result of the dilapidated and rusted pipelines through which the water flows. That is what we want cash investment to solve and it is something that would be useful in the long run for all of us. The Minister, who was defending the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government’s decision to implement water privatization, was also asked in an interview published in West Africa magazine whether that was a demand from the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank.

Mr. Barimah replied: “There is the need for logical arguments and deductions as far as the Breton Woods Institutions were concerned. This is something that I find difficult to accept sometimes. Some people think that governments and especially our government is just a puppet which can be used and manipulated at will by anybody. That is not true. We don not accept any proposal from anybody as gospel. We try to ascertain all the necessary facts and go through the various consultation processes. Anyway, just for the records, this idea of water privatization has been on the table since 1994. This is long before we took over the reigns of government of this country.”

Yaw Barimah, Ghana’s Minister of Works and Housing is a man of wide experience, having served in different portfolios in less than two years of the NPP government. In 2004 he was the deputy Minister of the Interior at a time when armed robbery in Ghana was so rampant that it caused fear and some said national security could have been threatened and he has also served as the government Chief Whip, promoting and defending government policies and action plans.